The (social media) world in 2017
Lessons and predictions from The Economist’s social media team
2016 was a year of tremendous growth and experimentation for The Economist’s social media team.
We pioneered a new way for The Economist to cover major news events such as Brexit and the US elections, working alongside editors, developers and designers to tailor our journalism for audiences on social media. We launched on emerging platforms including LINE, Medium and Snapchat. We killed off our accounts on under-performing platforms such as Tumblr and Pinterest. We experimented with new formats and gave them silly names like “audiograms” and “vimages”. We started to use data more cleverly to help us better understand our new audiences and how best to prioritise what platforms and projects to focus on.
We also learned a huge amount — especially about what works best for us. As social media journalists working in a 173-year-old publication, it’s tempting just to follow the latest trend or to copy rivals. One of the biggest lessons I learned this year was to resist that temptation and to focus on where we could have the biggest impact, while maintaining our core values.
I expect 2017 to be no different. I suspect that some publications, particularly those dependent on ad revenue, will continue to compete for a tiny slice of readers’ attentions in a race to the bottom of commodity news, producing only what the data tells them will go viral.
But others will strengthen their core proposition by continuing to produce high-quality journalism and using platforms to help amplify their messages. My hope that is that many readers — especially those who are fed up with clickbait and fake news — will increasingly find comfort in fact-based analysis and be willing to pay for it too. That’s where The Economist can really stand out on social media. The main challenge will be to seamlessly connect our readers’ journey from social channels to our own platforms.
What are some of the other major lessons we learned? And what can we expect in 2017? Members of our social and digital teams weighed in:
Adam Smith, deputy community editor
It should come as no surprise that politicians lie, but in 2016 many of them really outdid themselves. Bad journalists and social media news feeds have spent the year distributing the half-truths and outright lies started by an alarming number of politicians. What a challenge for those of us who try to use journalism and social media to improve the quality of public debate! So this year I’ve learned that The Economist needs new tricks if we are to give prominence in social media feeds to the high-quality, honest reporting we favour. We tried a few tricks during America’s election, such as crunching down our analysis into Facebook slideshows. And we plan more for 2017.
Adnan Sarwar, assistant community editor
Times were changing, but now they have changed. The Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute showed this year to be the first time that more 18–24 year-olds got their news from social media than they did from television. It predicts that this won’t change back. In 2017, old technologies will continue to be made new. NowThis say they invented words on moving images. They did not: that was silent films. The television never killed radio as it was meant to, and today we’re excited about video as if it has just been invented. The fight is to win the inches on the screens of people connected to the world through their mobile phones. And we have to do that in smart and surprising ways but with old tools: the word, the image, the voice and the moving picture.
Sunnie Huang, social media writer
Push notifications can unlock the potential of the lockscreen, but news outlets have to compete with other apps for the precious real-estate. In 2017, mobile videos will continue to attract traffic and engagement. The use of square videos will become more ubiquitous and creative.
James Waddell, social media writer
The whims of an online audience are far more fickle, unpredictable and sometimes unfathomable than I expected. Writing for social media is not simply a case of churning out whatever you think is going to be most popular, not least because you’ll often be wrong. A playful video about Psy’s Gangnam style may flop while a weighty analysis of a shipping line’s financial fortunes soars.
Archer K Hill II, social media writer
It may seem beyond us at The Economist to have to prove ourselves to anyone, especially those who indulge in fallible sources. But those very people vote in referendums and elections around the world. It is up to us to cast a wider net and demonstrate our validity to an entirely new realm of people who know not of our legacy and reputation. The challenge is not to be brought down in the mud, but to establish trust through showing the authenticity of our journalism. Today, more than ever, people trust people rather than brands. A top theme for 2017 will be more effective and interactive use of live video. We’ve seen the beginning of this already, on the back of Facebook Live’s meteoric rise. Still, many publishers have only scratched the surface of this useful tool, failing to venture beyond streaming Q&As and live events already happening. I’m certain that in the upcoming year, publishers will be more creative and strategic in their use of live video to establish trust, build new communities and establish dialogue that flows in more than one direction — perhaps even several directions at once.
Nicholas Barrett, social media writer
2016 was the year I learned that the vast majority of readers interact with news, not to learn about the world, but to comfort themselves. Journalism has become a form of therapy because the internet publishes so much that anybody can and will find an article to make them feel better about their pre-existing beliefs. This desire is perpetuated by Facebook and Google who have a huge economic incentive to feed us more of what we want. Facts and stats are merely the clay from which we mould the swords and shields of our rigid ideological arsenals. The only way to win is to adopt the moral language of other side. In 2017, the popularity of podcasts will continue to grow but will remain largely under the radar due to the difficulty of promoting them on social platforms. But if video and audio production teams can merge with the help of articulate journalists, then there is no need for podcasts to be left behind. If podcasts are merely made as promotional tools for journalism that is created for other platforms, they will languish.
Amanda Coletta, social media writer
What did I learn? That I quite possibly know nothing at all! It is both shocking and frightening how big a problem media literacy (or illiteracy) is. I remember when Wikipedia was first invented and we were warned in high school and university not to use it as a source for projects. That all seems so quaint now.
Edmund Henry, social media writer
I learned that our analysis and insight is what separates us from 24-hour breaking-news networks. But we also need to strike an optimal balance between facts and opinions by clearly distinguishing between the two. That is why this year we’ve started to label our editorials as such when we post them on social media. I also learned the value of using our journalists to directly engage with our audiences and to remind them we’re not some a giant and faceless media organisation. Expect more of this in 2017.
Adam Davison, head of data science
One prediction is that people will realise that the current strong focus on video is overrated. It has its place, but so does text — and both have unique benefits. Another is that there will be a big focus on how to define “trustworthiness” in news as people seek to deal with the fake news issues of this year. In 2017, Twitter will continue to decline softly, due to its failure to recognise that its real value is in celebrities and influencers being present rather than as a messaging platform, but I don’t expect a big collapse for a couple of years. Facebook will continue to generate good numbers but will continue to court controversy as it struggles to define the extent to which it is a source of news — and what that means for its product.
Tom Standage, deputy editor and head of digital strategy
I’m expecting two big changes in our approach to social media in 2017. First, the “land grab” phase of charging on to new platforms is probably over. In 2016 we went on to several new platforms, notably LINE, Snapchat and Facebook Instant Articles, and also launched our first VR content. But we also withdrew from Pinterest and Tumblr, and we’re constantly monitoring how best to distribute our resources across different platforms to make the biggest impact. In 2017 I expect more of that kind of thing: a focus on which kinds of content on which platforms work best for us, and further refinement of our strategy as we recognise that we have to pick our battles.
Second, as part of this shift, I think we’ll place more emphasis on channels that we control directly, notably newsletters and push notifications, as a counterweight to social platforms where we are at the mercy of constant changes in the rules and the algorithms. We accept that those rule-changes are part of the game, but “owned” channels will be a lot more stable by comparison. They may also help compensate for the big social-media trend of 2016, which nobody seems to be talking about, which is the seemingly terminal decline of Twitter. I love it and I don’t want it to die, but its fate seems even less certain than it did a year ago.
